Your Landing page is the heart of your site. Irrespective of whether you have a product or a service to sell, landing pages can provide a subsequent boost to the conversion rate. Optimizing them is not hard if you know when and where to tweak the various elements. However, the hardest part is to find the elements that require some tweaks. This brings us to the fact that there is no rule sculpted over the stones which provides guidance towards the perfect optimization of landing pages.
Some ideas can optimize your landing page for better performance. They are:
Loading speed:
A landing page that loads faster has better conversion rate when put into comparison with a page that loads slower. Therefore you very first aim should be to increase the loading speed of your landing page. Factors that can be an obstacle to increase the loading speed are:
1. Images: Too many images over your landing page can be responsible for slow loading. Though images are eye capturers and are very much essential, it is necessary that you limit their usage. Cut down on any images that is irrelevant to the content. As far 
as possible try to eliminate the images of huge sizes as these consume more loading time. A single image at any specific fold of the page is the best practice.
2. Videos: Videos are widely used to replace written content. However, you should be aware of the fact that videos can never replace written content. Some people have completely stripped their landing page of written content and have replaced them by a long sales video. Users those who have a high internet speed connection will be sated whereas the users with slow internet speed will have no other option but to leave the page.
A smart marketer will tell you to balance your page in terms of written content and videos. A video clip should be used only when you are unable to explain a certain idea in written content. For example, let us say you are promoting your dancing lessons. The landing page can be a mix of written content which will be used to promote your product and the videos can be used to show clips of some complex dancing steps which might be impossible to put into written words.
Note: In many cases the loading speed of your page is attributed to your hosting company. Webhostingpad and register.com are some of the hosting companies that provide excellent hosting with fast loading speed.
Length of the page
What should be the length of the page? Should I provide the readers with just the basic information or detailed information about the product? These two questions spring simultaneously while designing a landing page. Again, there is no rule stating the length and the amount of the information that has to be provided as the answer to the above two questions depends upon the answer of the following question, how much information do your customers require to trust your product?
The amount of information provided should be enough for your customers to trust your product. The content in question can be of just a short paragraph or can be a never ending landing page. However, your copywriter should be talented enough to create a stunning copy so that your reader is adhered to the page until they make a purchase. Moreover, a balance between video and content will make your landing page look great.
Tone of the copy
Personalization is the magic word when it comes to marketing. The sad part is the overuse of the magic word. Imagine yourself to be looking out for a product and you suddenly arrive at a landing page where it is full of colloquial language sprinkled with emoticons. Would you like to risk your $40 in purchasing the product though the price seems to be reasonable? Hardly any of us will make a purchase from such a place.
When marketers mean personalization, they are telling you to write a copy that can be taken as personal without losing the soul of business. An image of yours is critical when it comes to personalization. The next part is to write a copy which appears to be a personalized one while still holding the nature of business. Once you get a good copywriter this shouldn’t be much of a concern to you.
Experiment
In some cases changing just a sentence can affect the conversion rate. Therefore, consistent experiment with your landing page is necessary. Split experiment can provide better results when using trial and error methods.
These few tips will, though trivial, when applied can affect the conversion rate in huge numbers.
Author:
Richie Richardson is a prolific writer on Internet Marketing and Social Media. He also writes for webhostingpad discount codes and register.com discount codes. You can make use of the deals provided by webhostingpad and register.com for your hosting needs.
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Did you try? A Look at the data from #SMWsmac [InfoGraphic]
What can you do in 16 days? Try!
With just under a month before Social Media Week 2012, it came to our attention that NYC did not have a daylong event that was tailored to teach the small business owners and professionals how Social Media is and can be used. On Feb 1st, 2012 dbmei authors decided to launch Social Media Action Camp! The event which a few days later became an official part of Social Media Week was set for Feb 16th 2012 at the Roger Smith Hotel in NYC.
Data provided by Synthesio , and a few other sources .
The event tag #smwsmac generated over 1,000 tweets! Which represents about 5% of the social media activity in New York City. The Social Influencers reached over 116,000 followers and generated tweets in 15 countries globally!
In addition to the info from Synthesio, we also know that:
- 102 people attended throughout the day
- 128 viewers at one time on LiveStream
- 976 views on the Live Stream Channel
- 1484 tweets to date #smwsmac
- 71 check-ins on foursquare to the Roger Smith Hotel
The Official Social Media Week event page hosted on SocialMediaWeek.org generated 177 Facebook “Likes”, 250 “shares” on LinkedIn and 834 tweets that did not feature #smwsmac as a tag. Making the event the most socially shared event for ALL Social Media Week 2012 globally!
The Social@Olgivy Movers & Shakers platform supported by Kred featured organizer @BasilPuglisi as the top influencer for Feb 16th and both @BasilPuglisi and @dbmei as the top 5 influencers for the following day Feb 17th 2012.
The event was a mix of speakers featuring some of the digital names like Google, Klout, Synthesio, StumbleUpon, EmpireAvenue & Constant Contact. The event featured digital media professionals like David Meerman Scott, Amy Vernon, Mardy Sitzer, and Lujure’s Nathan Latka. Lisa A Burns, representing Corning Inc., spoke about the wonder of how a Fortune 500 Company used YouTube to capture more than 17 million views. Then the dbmei authors Bill Corbett Jr., Jeff Ogden, Craig Yaris and Basil C. Puglisi contributed their take on using social media to generate action!
The real success resulted from the response that the attendees reported. The mix of content and style presented, generated useful information in many areas with actionable advice and solutions.
“The diverse group of presenters offered extremely valuable best practices and actionable advice. It was also nice attending a social media event that didn’t cater to newbie’s or skeptics” said David Gise
The event exemplified the point that “you don’t know till you try”, and while we have a long list of things we can do to make the next event even better, it’s an important point for dbmei as well as the individuals involved to say not only did we try, but we succeeded. If you take nothing else away from the article, we hope that when a opportunity presents itself, you be so bold as to try and make it happen.
SES New York Conference and Expo 2012 [Event]
March 19 – 23
Hilton New York
1335 Ave Americas
New York, NY 10019
The SES Conference and Expo is a series of conferences and events in which a special focus is given to best practices, tips, and trends in many different areas.
- SEO
- PPC
- RTB
- Demand Gen
- Mobile
- Social
- Local
The SES events provide leadership instruction from some of the industry’s top experts. As usual, SES New York will have some highly recognized and respected professionals to educate attendees.
Just after morning coffee on Tuesday March 20th, Avinash Kaushik, Digital Marketing Evangelist for Google, will be a key speaker on the topic of balancing multiple media channels and leveraging the Clear Line of Sight model to help ensure business owners are optimizing across all important business drivers. Avinash is also the author of two bestselling books: Web Analytics 2.0, Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, of which 100% of the proceeds go to his favorite charities. Be sure to come to the keynote to learn which top four business drivers Avinash believes are most vital to your growth.
After Avinash’s set there will be five simultaneous sessions that attendees can choose from.
The Tools of the Trade for SEO
This session will help if you are a party responsible for a business’s SEO. Attendees will learn about up-to-date tools that will help you more efficiently accomplish your daily tasks such as:
- Diagnosing and Correcting Issues
- Indexing
- Competitive Analysis
- On-Site Optimization
- Site and Page Level Information
Paid Search Competitive Analysis
It is part of any essential business plan to understand the particular strengths and weaknesses of the competition. The knowledge can be invaluable when it comes to learning which links you should acquire, what to pay for ads, which content you should offer, and the customer base you would like to gain. With moderator Andrew Goodman, of the SES Advisory Board, who is President of Page Zero Media and fantastic speakers Stephanie Bailey 
the Client Manager for Adlucent and Matt Van Wagner, President of Find Me Faster, attendees are certain to take away vital information about new trends in tools and analysis as well as other information critical to understanding your toughest competitors.
Crossing the Digital Divide: The Leap from Search to Display
In many cases, display advertising can lack in the areas of placement, targeted pricing, and ROI of search. Three notable speakers will share fresh takes on media models for your business.
- Frost Prioleau, CEO, Simpl.fi
- Steven Golus, General Manager, Go-to-Market, DataXu
- Dax Hamman, Chief Revenue Officer, Chango
These speakers will present an intro to DSPs and ad exchanges, overviews of new display optimization strategies, and give plenty of advice for those already experienced search marketers who would like to take the leap into exchange-traded display.
Search Engine Marketing 101
This intro session will supply attendees with a comprehensive overview of all of the key concepts involved in search engine marketing. The speaker will be Bill Hunt from the SES Advisory Board and President of Back Azimuth Consulting. Attendees can expect to have vital SEM questions answered such as:
- How can my site be best optimized to attract organic traffic without excess costs?
- What are the major search engines that I should be concerned about?
- How can I achieve high ranking or placement with search engine ad opportunities?
The last session for this conference hour is soon to be determined.
DBMEi Subscriber Discount
The SES has an incredible agenda prepared so do not miss out on your chance to attend or the opportunity to get a great discount for doing so just for being a DBMEi subscriber. Head to the registration and pricing page for SES New York 2012 and be sure to enter the code DBM20 for a 20% discount on your price.
Author:
@BasilPuglisi is the Executive Director and Publisher for Digital Brand Marketing Education (dbmei.com). Basil C. Puglisi is also the President of Puglisi Consulting Group, Inc. A Digital Brand Marketing Consultancy that manages professional and personal branding for Fortune 500 CEOs, Hedge Fund Managers and Small Business Owners.
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The New Social Marketing Strategy with Google+
As a marketer, your social profile must be thriving on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. But the important question is, ‘Is it thriving over Google+?’ I can assure you that most of you will answer in the negative. However, it is not too late. Grab a business page over at Google+ as soon as you finish reading this.
Google is smart and knows how to beat down its competitors. When Google+ was launched, none had the slightest idea that it will be used as a cutting edge in the market by Google. Yes, Google has merged the search engine and the social network as one. This attempt by Google can be described as ‘Social Searching’.
Search + Your World
It is the new Search plus Your World (Search plus Your World) I am talking about. When you do a Google search, being logged into your Google+ account, you will find that results are being personalized to match your taste. Let us consider that you are searching for ‘body building tips’ and if one of your friends within your circle has written about it 
then it will be shown to you in the search results. Seems good eh? Here comes the truth.
Google, in the name of personalizing your searches, is forcing the results of Google+ under your throat. How? Let me explain in a more elaborate manner. Suppose you wish to know about a certain brand or celebrity and you would like to give a search over Google. In the search results you will notice that the brand’ or celebrity’s Google+ profile is given preference. Now, do you understand what Google is up to? Yes, it is competing with other social networks taking advantage of its search engine.
Google gives less importance to other social network’s posts and therefore the more urgency in getting your business page over Google+ as soon as possible. A business page over Google+ will help people find your business over search results. However, just a page is not sufficient to boost your business to the required level. Here is one of my social marketing ideas that you can incorporate in your business page over Google+.
Ways to Win at Google +
It is more likely that Google+ posts are to be shown in the search results. Include the keyword in the title as well as the body of the post so that it will help the Google bots to index it and show over the search results. Here comes an added advantage to you as a marketer by including the keyword in posts. Instead of explaining it let me show you with a theoretical example.
Let us consider that you have a blog/website dealing with ‘Diet’ and you wish to optimize a certain article or page for a keyword. When doing a keyword search over any keyword tool you find the keyword ‘diet foods’ has high volume of search and with lesser competition. On the other hand the keyword ‘safe weight loss’ has the same value as ‘diet foods’ to a certain extent. Confused, you optimize your content for the keyword ‘diet foods’ and therefore leave the keyword ‘safe weight loss’.
After posting the article (optimized for ‘diet foods’) over your site, you generally share it to social networks by just pasting the link and allowing the social network to grab the first five lines of the content. In case of Google+ you can try the other way around. The article which was written around ‘Diet Foods’ can also be written around ‘Safe weight loss’, though the latter keyword cannot compensate wholly but it can at least be used as introducer to the content. Yes, write a title and a short description around the keyword ‘safe weight loss’ and manually paste it to the Google+. Later you can include the link of your content and let the social network have its way with it.
What are the Pros?
What is the advantage of doing this extra work? Let me remind you again that Google is going to crawl every post in Google+ and therefore your post which has a short description given by you manually as well as the short description which Google + has indexed for you over its network are both going to be shown over search result. Irrespective of whether a user searches for ‘diet foods’ or ‘safe weight loss’, the chances of your post appearing in the search result will increase.
The odd of the post being shown to the users increases if the user is within your circle. Therefore, it is better that you start focusing on Google+. At the same time do not abandon your audience over other network, because who knows what the future of social marketing will be.
Before I can wrap up, some of you might know that Google provides the ability of depersonalizing your search results. Yes, it’s true. But how many of you will depersonalize your search results and opt for a more global search? Maybe some of us would depersonalize the searches and would like a pure Google search. Will the common user care to do it? I do not think so. When most users find what they are searching for, none will care to depersonalize their search results.
Author:
Richie Richardson is a Social Marketing Expert and SEO Analyst. You can reach him over his blog www.zarrylyms.com where he discusses on current issues regarding Social Marketing, Branding, Affiliate Marketing, SEO and B2B.
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Author:
Richie Richardson is a Social Marketing Expert and SEO Analyst. You can reach him over his blog www.zarrylyms.com where he discusses on current issues regarding Social Marketing, Branding, Affiliate Marketing, SEO and B2B.
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Digital Marketing: Why Your Businesses Phone Number is Crucial to Success (Part 1)
“Name, Address and Phone Number, oh if you have a website or social media page you can add that two, but we don’t care” the Internet!
Phone Numbers are Crucial to Success!!! They are more important than domains!
It used to be you used a fancy 800 number to look impressive or to develop branding, take 1-800-FLOWERS for example. 1-800 Flowers was a great branding campaign that generated massive brand recognition for a referral service.
Google really brought the attention back to local when it launched Google places. Google used both the local phone number and the address to enhance its search results to bring business back to local merchants and while it sent SEO professionals scrambling, local business owners were thirsty to learn more.
Why Phone Numbers are Crucial!
Take any listing service or data set and you’ll find three consistent elements to how it organizes its data, first is the name, second the phone number and third is the address. Website domains and social media are nowhere to be found now, nor will they in the future. In fact, when Patch Media launched its local directory for Merchants and Business Owners the AOL local sensation had one problem, no address no listing… Google places needed that three digit identifier to decide if the address matched phone number, and Yelp listed businesses by name, phone numbers and address.
Branding Trend: It’s All Local!
In a time when people are being frugal with their money, they’re a lot quicker to call a local number then an 800 number. The fact is people actually avoid 800 numbers because they prefer to have someone local and hesitate at the thought that the number will be routed to India. Local is the big Brand in the United States right now, take a look in both Traditional and Digital Media and you’re bound to see the word Local at just about every other turn.
Phone Numbers: How Do I Get Them, Use them, Keep them?
There are a few tricks that can help local business owners stretch their influence and presence. Take MagicJack, a nifty little device that sells for $20 and provides phone service for $20 a year! After Google Places launched black hat SEO professionals started buying these as fast as they could. You see they take the MajicJack, register the phone number and then connect a local name to the local number and give it a local address through something like a UPS Store.
i.e. The Actual business is a plumber in Parkland, Florida with a 954 area code number. The blackhat SEO Pro would buy (5) five MagicJacks with local phone numbers, then open a UPS Box in towns around Parkland that the plumber served. Five Splash Pages later, that plumber looked local in 
six locations but really only existed in one.
If you’re a digital or virtual business, then the issue is the same. The phone number is crucial to looking local and you may be in NYC, but with the right number you now appear to be in LA, Moscow, Paris, Chicago, Miami etc. If your using a service like Regus and their Virtual Office, you can set the Magic Jack or Vanity number to forward to that location until you have an office or employee to forward it to later.
Port a number! Always Port a number, I inherited a phone number 4 years ago and I still get calls for children’s clothing from some company that had it before I did. If I sold children’s clothes I be rolling in free leads.
KEEP YOUR NUMBER!!!! The Android and Mr. Number Effect
Want to know what’s really pissing off telemarketers and collection agencies?
Android and Mr. Number! Android phones from version 1.5 have had a feature that allows people to save a contact and set the contact to forward directly to voicemail. Mr. Number is an application on all devices that blocks suspected spam (set by community feedback), unknown numbers and numbers you blacklist! So before you give up your number and get a new one, better think twice. If you do get a new number check it against the Mr. Number database, if its listed as a spam, credit collection or telemarketer get rid of it!
(Part 2 – Using Phone Numbers to Track Marketing Success)
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Time to Get on Google +: How to Set up Your Google + Brand Page
I think for many of us, when Google + came along that it also came with a bit of that new social network feel and its accompanying apprehension. Most smart networkers at least made their way there to grab their own vanity URL’s and at least get the virtual networking ball rolling in the right direction. However, with Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn usage, many networkers have already found themselves pushed to the limit in either the time or resources it may take to keep all three fed and running properly.
To date, Google +’s numbers have posed absolutely no dangers to Facebooks user numbers, but it has recently passed through a 55% increase in users during its strongest month ever and is focused on reaching the 400 million user mark by the end of 2012. Considering that Facebook didn’t pass the 60 million member mark until almost four years after its creation, these are actually still quite impressive numbers. So if you haven’t taken the time to reserve and build your businesses Google + Brand page, now is definitely the time.
Building Your Google + Brand Page
There are already some incredible Google + Brand pages out there to take important lessons from. 
After a few moments of looking over the above pages, you should have a relatively good idea of what your aesthetic and functional options may be. Sign into your Google account and then head to the Google + Business page to get started.
Create a Page
On the creation page you will need to simply select the category your business falls under. If none of the options seem an appropriate match, choose the other option at the bottom left.
Business Info
- Next you will add your businesses name and website URL.
- Next select the additional category that best suits your business. The sub categories are dependent on the main category chosen.
- Lastly, select who, by age group, is allowed to view your Google + Brand page.
Photo and Tagline
You only have ten words to create the perfect tagline for your business page. Put deep thought into this process taking into consideration the most vital keys for your SEO needs.
The Sharing Begins
On the next page you can begin to share your page with your personal Google + circle, or save that task for later.
The Social Media Drill
Google + Brand pages are not so different from Facebook fan pages when it comes to management. If you have even basic knowledge of how to manage your Facebook and Twitter accounts, you can pretty much rely on a try or two before you are just as familiar on Google. Don’t forget, Google + is currently experiencing novel rises in its user base, don’t miss the chance to increase your brand awareness via this format in 2012.
Similar Article:
Google+ Pages Open the Doors for Brands and Businesses
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Google Music Goes Live in the Cloud
Google has dipped into musical endeavors with the launch of Google Music in mid-November. Originally, the service launched back in May in a beta version. Launched as a suite of music services, it is quite obvious that this is Google’s attempt to take on Amazon and iTunes in cloud and other music storage space.
Introducing Google Music
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=NI8rQEHoE24]
Although it is rumored that Google has been attempting to secure partnerships with four major record labels, currently, Google Music simply allows users to store their purchases and upload other files to their music cloud.
Advantages and Issues
Google Music has seems to have its own pros and cons.
- There are two different sites. The Google Music site is the library and player. However, you must purchase the music on the Android Market.
- Google Music will automatically back up most music files including iTunes. As you do the intitial set up, Google Music will prompt you to upload any previous music files you have. iTunes, Windows Media Player libraries, or any other folder you designate.
- Many Android devices now have full support for Google Music, some have not even mentioned creating it yet. Since one of Google Music’s main selling point is its ability to replace iTunes services, this could pose quite a problem for many Android users.
- Although there is no official app for the iPhone, users can enjoy Google Music services on iOS devices. A pleasing surprise is that even their site is formatted properly to be easily viewable and easy to navigate on iPhone view screens.
- Without a doubt, there is loads of free music. However, you will need to share your credit card info with Google just to get the free tunes.
- You can share only the songs you have purchased to Google Plus.
Regardless of your choice in digital music stores, now may be a good time to get in on what Google Music and their shop has to offer you.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSnr0VLbUJ8&feature=relmfu]
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Google+ Pages Open the Doors for Brands and Businesses
This past June, immediately after Google launched it’s highly anticipated Google+ social network, internet savvy businesses like Ford, Dell and Mashable.com rushed to create pages for their brands.
Only to have them removed a few days later. Google’s announcement soon followed: “In the meantime, we ask you not to create a business profile using regular profiles on Google+. The platform at the moment is not built for the business use case, and we want to help you build long-term relationships with your customers. Doing it right is worth the wait. We will continue to disable business profiles using regular profiles. (Christian Oestlien Ads project manager on Google+)
One hundred days later Google delivered on its promise. On November 7, 2011 Google+ announced the grand opening of Google+ Pages worldwide.
Google+ Pages allows businesses, brands, and organizations create their own page and establish a circle of like-minded people who enjoy the brand and want to talk about it. Not only does the page allow having a conversation with brand representatives in a way of personalized customer service, it also allows the group of followers to have a conversation with each other.
As Google+ puts it, when it talks about the customers: “…we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands… this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour. Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most.” (Google’s blog)
Not only brands and businesses are involved. Google+ wants to enlarge the circle of users to local business, products, corporations, institutions, organizations, arts and entertainment, sports teams and more. They have been working with businesses since the launch in June to understand the needs and requirements of brand names. You can see the pages of these businesses already active:
- Dallas Cowboys
- Macy’s
- Pepsi
- Toyota
- Anderson Copper 360
- X games
- Zen Bikes
- The Muppets
Having pages for brands and businesses is nothing new, but Google+ has a few advantages over the competition:
- People can recommend the brand easily by pressing the +1 button, and start sharing immediately.
- A brand can have more than one page. A car manufacturer, for example, can have a page for each of its models.
- Although Facebook has over 500 million users, and Google+ has, so far, about 50 million, the biggest advantage of Google+ has to do with the billions of queries made every day on the search engine, most of them looking for businesses or services. Google will include Google+ pages in its search results.
- Direct connect – The easiest way to find a band you like to follow or a product has been amended as well. Typing the sign + before the query will take the searcher straight to the brand page. (Try it with + Angry Birds)
The official announcement on Google’s blog ends with these words: “With Google+, we strive to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to software. Today’s initial launch of Google+ Pages brings us a little bit closer, but we’ve still got lots of improvements planned, and miles to go before we sleep. So stay tuned.
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New Google Newsletter and Mobile Adwords Features
Google Adwords launched new features in September 2011. These new features are geared towards making site clicks and even subscriptions to site newsletters or blogs easier to accomplish. Being able to get signed up to internal site options from the external source of a Google browser could go a long way in increasing traffic for those who utilize these methods.
AdWords Subscribe Option
Adwords now provides an option to allow Google search engine users to subscribe directly from a PPC ad. The option to subscribe to newsletters or email lists can be displayed on top or side ads.
All ads are displayed with “Privacy Info” that lets the viewer know that information shared in the input boxes will be shared with the advertiser.
Mobile Landing Pages
A recent study found that 61% of mobile browsers are not likely to return to a site that does not provide a good mobile experience. In response, Google initiated a shift in their policy that will now reward mobile sites with good optimization. Users with good mobile optimization who promote their sites with Google Adwords will now receive better performance. The ads created will drive traffic at a lower cost if they directly link to your site that is optimized for mobile users.
How Will This Affect Me?
If you are a business owner, whether or not you use Google Adwords, the time to optimize your site for mobile users is now. Even without the use of Google Adwords to promote a site, knowing that over half of mobile browsers will never return to your non-optimized site should be enough to push you into sprucing up your site to accommodate users on mobile devices. Getting rid of flash heavy content is a great step towards optimizing for mobile usage.
How Do I Optimize My Site for Mobile?
Google has offered a few suggestions to help you get your site optimized for mobile usage.
- Keep the layout and design simple
- Prioritize your content
- Use markedly mobile features
- Make your site easy to convert
If you want to know how well your site functions on mobile devices, grab your device and load up your site. If it is frustrating for you to navigate, you may want to make the changes required to encourage mobile use of your web pages.
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Google+ is Open to ALL and Google+ Leading Mobile Development
Today Google plus went live and open to everyone. With 20 million people engaging in the first three months in its trail stage, the Google+ platform now hopes to capture the masses.
While some writers like Robert over at BundlePost are betting against Google+ and predicating it to be the threat to Google, I am confident that Google has secured itself in the mobile and cloud space. This move by Google to capture mobile so early is what will have Google on top for a very long time. Google+ is in a safe place, capturing Social Media engagement and tailoring to the mobile trend.
Google Leading in the Mobile Space:
While I will give credit to Apple and Facetime for being the first to the mobile video market, the wifi limitation left users feeling like video chat was still more Sci-Fi then reality. In comes T-Mobile and 4G with the MyTouch4G, now you can use video even when not on a wifi signal, however the user interfaces are scattered and the experience doesn’t seem to capture the social feel to being in a room with a real person.
Google Hangout is introduced on PC and groups of people start to engage, converse and learn about each other in real time in a social setting that makes you rethink about your daily appearance. One of the first things I noticed was the trend of individuals who previously relied on a single picture having to rethink the way there where dressed, the room there where in and what was behind them. Communication skills kicked back into hi swing as the most important communication indicator was alive and kicking, body language.
This move to get a fully functioning communication tool in the hands of the largest growing market in the world should be enough to secure Google’s future.
Android & G+
When you take a look at how Android has performed in market penetration, you can’t help but realize that Google is just getting started. It’s the little things that are setting Google apart from the competition, i.e. Google Cloud contacts from the release of the G1. Androids first phone was cloud ready as anyone who stored their contacts on their google account never again had to worry about lost phones, moving contacts to new phones etc. This was done without wires and with no need for a PC or software.
Flash, love it or hate it Android got it. You almost wonder why Apple left the door open like this, but Flash adopted by the Google into Android mobile technology was the nail that broke the growth rate of the iPhone and then later allowed Android devices to surpass iPads in global sales and users.
Google+ brought lots of new features, in addition to the latest Hangouts, the G+ app allowed you to upload videos and pictures in real time to the google+ account meaning that in addition to ease of sharing, you could lose your phone during the day and still save your memories, promo photos etc.
In the end, google is innovating for the future, not just today. That’s the sign of a strong company, one I am sure my grandkids will love and hate, long after Apple and Facebook are gone.
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